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Israel Sought to Contain Hamas for Years. Now It Faces a Potentially Costly Fight to Eliminate It.
Hamas’s attack on Israel upends a carrots-and-sticks policy toward the Palestinian militant group
For years, Israel has been caught between its wish to rid itself of Hamas and the reality that removing it from Gaza could require a long war.
By Dov Lieber, Oct. 10, 2023
TEL AVIV—For years, Israel’s government pursued a policy of containment against Hamas, using a mix of economic incentives and military force to keep the Palestinian militant group that runs Gaza in check and protect Israeli citizens from violence.
After last weekend’s deadly attacks, which killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, policy makers are adopting a new approach toward a group that the U.S. and Israel have designated a terrorist organization: eradication.
Israel’s leaders are preparing a large-scale operation intended to either decisively end Hamas’s hold on Gaza, a densely populated strip of Palestinian territory, or gut its military capabilities entirely.
“What was in Gaza will be no more,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday. “They will regret [their actions].”
Tensions continue to escalate between Israel and Hamas as the militant group has threatened to execute hostages if the country continues to bombard civilian homes in the Gaza Strip without warning.
Giora Eiland, a former Israeli general and national security adviser, said, “We will not be able to return to the status quo that existed prior to this attack.”
“It’s either us or them,” he said, and “a matter of the survival of the state.”
Israel has long been caught between its desire to rid itself of Hamas—which is backed by Iran and openly committed to Israel’s destruction—and the reality that removing it from Gaza could require a long war and potentially cost many lives.
The country’s military has responded to previous rounds of violence with limited airstrikes to full-blown invasions, but it never risked the all-out-war needed to completely topple Hamas’s rule.
In the past, the Israeli military typically targeted Hamas only if attacked or if the group had built up a threatening capability, such as tunnels dug into Israel.
Recently, Israel also sought to provide economic benefits to residents of Gaza aimed at raising the cost of direct conflict for Hamas. Israel loosened trade restrictions on the blockaded enclave, which is home to two million people, and bolstered supplies of water, medicine and fuel.
Israeli authorities also issued new work permits that allowed thousands of Gazans to find jobs in Israel.
Israel completely removed its civilian presence in Gaza in 2005 because officials thought Israeli rule of the territory wasn’t sustainable. The next year, Hamas won parliamentary elections. In 2007, the group violently took control of the Gaza Strip from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which still governs most Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Israel quickly placed a tight blockade on the territory, along with Egypt.
After Israel’s first major conflict with Hamas at the end of 2008, Benjamin Netanyahu, then the leader of the opposition, advocated toppling Hamas. Instead, a cease-fire was brokered with Arab and Western mediators. The two sides have fought several small and large conflicts since then, most recently in 2021.
Netanyahu, now prime minister, allowed Qatar in 2018 to begin sending millions of dollars to Hamas’s government to boost the economic incentives for the militant group to maintain peace. In 2021, he began increasing the number of Gazans permitted to work in Israel.
By this year, that number had reached nearly 20,000. Israeli security officials felt that the work permits could be incentives for Hamas to keep the peace. If Hamas attacked, the border would be closed, and thousands of Gazan families would lose their livelihoods until Hamas restored calm.
Netanyahu pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy by propping up Hamas, while at the same time weakening the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, said Yohanan Plesner, a former lawmaker and head of the Jerusalem-based think tank the Israel Democracy Institute.
“It was ideology at the expense of security,” Plesner said.
Plesner said he, along with much of the Israeli security establishment, had mistakenly supported the carrot-and-stick policy with Hamas, preferring to avoid any extended conflict.
Now, neither aerial bombardment nor limited ground incursions are enough to address the threat Hamas poses, Israeli officials and analysts said.
“This is not the regular small contained Gaza breast-for-tat,” said Israeli military spokesman Richard Hecht, in a briefing to reporters on Tuesday. “The scale and scope of atrocity here is bigger. Israel is going to respond very severely.”
Israel is conducting airstrikes on Gaza and mobilizing troops and tanks on its border. At the same time, it has cut off all electricity, food, water and fuel from entering Gaza.
Returning to the Palestinian territory carries risks for Israeli ground forces, which last entered Gaza in 2014. The coastal enclave’s populated is packed in urban zones, and Hamas fighters have an extensive network of underground tunnels to conceal their movements.
In addition, mass displacement of civilians and extensive loss of Palestinian life could erode international support for Israel. Even if Israel were successful in eliminating Hamas, it isn’t clear that it could govern the enclave.
Mkhaimar Abu Saadah, a Gaza-based political analyst, said it would be difficult for Israel to truly uproot Hamas.
“The U.S. stayed in Afghanistan for 20 years, did it end the Taliban?” he said. “The whole world fought against ISIS, is it finished? Maybe as an organization but their thought still lives on.”